


All Care and Have None

by misscam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-27
Updated: 2009-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill is all care. Laura is trying not to have one. [Adama/Roslin]</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Care and Have None

**Author's Note:**

> Set during 'A Disquiet Follows My Soul', hence spoilers for that episode. Many thanks to miri_d, siraj and lotus79 for input and beta.

All Care and Have None  
by **misscam**

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

II

William Adama and Laura Roslin love each other, but they're not always of like mind.

Bill always reads a book in the morning; letting the words of others be his for a little while to find some meaning in them for him.

After Earth, he still does, his own feelings lost somewhere along the journey.

Laura used to read the propechies of Pythia every night to find what a woman a long time ago dictated Laura Roslin to be; the pages are ashes now.

After Earth, everything is.

II

There is freedom in running, Laura thinks.

Run, and everything is behind her. Earth. Prophecies. Dying leader. All gone to frak. It can't catch her. Run, and all that matters is the pace, the feet, the pounding of her heart, the movement and the now. Run, and the path ahead will be what it is, abysses and all. She isn't afraid. She can't lose more than she already has.

Everyone thinks her a little mad, she knows. She thinks herself a little mad, at least in the part of her that have become the observer, honed by years of politics and needing to watch every word. But everything is greatly mad now and she isn't even sure what sane is anymore.

Earth, home of the Cylons, where is the sanity in that? Taking treatments to prolong a life miserably when there is no longer anything to live for, where is the sanity in that?

It's strange, but she never realised how tired of standing still against all the waves crashing on them she was until she started running.

There is freedom in running. At least until you run straight into the immovable force of the Admiral.

Can't run from everything when you don't want to, Laura does know, and there is something she still hasn't lost.

II

The Admiral would like the President to step up again, share the burden and be the partner of the leadership agreement they made so long ago.

Bill is just tired, and when Laura kisses him, he thinks of rest and silence.

II

"Now get out of my way," Laura says, and doesn't look back when she runs even while she feels his eyes on her, following.

II

Hold on to your family, Bill has always thought. This family. He's made it that, bit by bit.

Part of it has always been there – Lee, son by birth and blood, but so often a stranger in relations. Lee is his son, but also his own man, and Bill doesn't always understand that man. Doesn't always try to. He doesn't need to. He can still love.

Part of it he picked. Saul Tigh, the brother most would disown and Bill just chose. Not for the mistakes. But for carrying on after them, living with them and because everyone needs someone willing to stand up _for_ them and _to_ them in equal measure.

Part of it he's had built for a while. Kara, daughter by mind and military, and something like a second chance. She knows those, after all. He thinks sometimes her life is a string of them, and that includes her death.

Part of it he took in by default, but with no less pleasure. Dee. Lee's wife for a while, and thus his daughter-in-law, and that didn't have to end because the marriage did. The end was her choice – by her own hand.

Part of it is new in admission, if not in fact. Laura, wife by heart, and thus it doesn't matter if it's not by law. Not a woman he expected or even wanted to fall in love with, and all the more profound to him for it.

Bill's family. It is about as rag-tag as his Fleet, and it works about just as well, falling apart around him with no clear fixes.

Bill always holds on anyway.

He's never learned to let go.

II

"I'll be with the President," Bill says, and Saul never blinks, only acknowledges.

It doesn't take a genuis to get the implication, which is good since Saul has never thought himself one.

There are too many expectations of great things with it, and he wonders fleetingly if for all the differences in them, that's what the Old Man and the President mirror in each other: the expectations and always being looked to and not at.

Maybe they can see each other.

II

Laura is waiting in the dark for him when Bill enters her quarters, only a few candles scattered like stars in space to give light. It reminds him strangely of youth, when romance was all notions and not yet experience, but they are not teenagers and he loves the lines on her skin for what they make her.

There isn't much else on a battlestar to set the mood, he reflects, and forgets the thought when she tiptoes to kiss him, her hands already working the buttons on his uniform.

He isn't sure if she's still running and he is just matching her speed, or if he has put himself in her way and paused her for a moment, but here they are.

"Are you sure you feel...?" he whispers against her lips, thinking of her draining treatments and the fatigue he's seen in her and he still wishes selfishly she would take - for him, to postpone the loss he'll suffer.

"Yes," she simply says, her breath warm as she parts her lips and the taste of her not sweetly medicinal at all.

II

Bill is all care and she is trying not to have one (refuses to have one any more). He is gentle in his caresses, she is lost in them. She closes her eyes to his mouth across her skin, he is always looking at her when she opens them again. He is trying to forget the troubles of the day with her, she is trying not to remember all that is outside the room. She laces her fingers in his hair and loves the grey in it, he kisses the bare skin of her scalp almost reverently. He holds still, she flexes. She bucks, he thrusts, he waits, she moves, she breathes, he murmurs words she can't catch against her shoulder.

She knows what he is saying anyway. He loves her. She loves him.

Here too, in the dark, and she holds on to it.

II

When they sleep, Bill snores a little and Laura moves restlessly from dreams she'll forget in the morning, and both could use more rest than they're getting.

Love doesn't stop who they are. William Adama who wanted to stay and fight the Cylons, and Laura Roslin who wanted to run from them.

Love doesn't stop who they are, but it can slowly adjust them.

II

In the morning, Laura picks a book and reads for him to start the day, bodies entwined with his arms around her and his leg across hers, and lets them be her words to him, as he once did.

II

FIN


End file.
